of these reasons, if, indeed, the others were not mere adjecta, not to be taken into account; whereas there were doubts if she was for herself ever counted at all, except as the mere “old-pot” which contained the realities.  And their happiness would certainly have been complete if it had not been—­at least in the case of Aminadab—­that it could be enjoyed only by passing through that grim medium, a churchyard.  But then, is not all celestial bliss burdened by this condition; nay, is not even our earthly bliss, which is a foretaste of heaven, only a flower raised upon the rottenness of other flowers—­a type of the soul as it issues from corruption?  Yes, Aminadab could not get to the holy of holies except by passing through Logie kirkyard, a small and most romantic Golgotha, on the left of the road leading to Lochee, whose inhabitants it contained, and which was so limited and crowded, that one might prefigure it as one of those holes or dungeons in Michael Angelo’s pictures, belching forth spirits in the shape of inverted tadpoles, the tail uppermost, and yet representing ascending sparks.  The wickets that surrounded Logie House—­lying as it does upon the south side of Balgay Hill, and flanked on the east by a deep gully, wherethrough runs a small stream, which, so far as I know, has no name—­were locked at night.  The terrors of this place, at the late hours when these said henchmen behoved to seek their savoury rewards, were the only drawback to Aminadab’s supreme bliss.

And if the time of these symposial meetings had been somewhat later in the century, how much more formidable would have been a passage through this contracted valley of tumuli and bones!  No churchyard, except those of Judea, was ever invested with such terrors—­not the mystical fears of a divine fate seen in the descending cloud, with Justice gleaming with fiery eyes on Sin, and holding those scales, the decision of which would destine to eternal bliss or eternal woe, and that Justice personified in Him “whose glory is a burning like the burning of a fire,”—­no, but the revolting fears produced by the profanity of that poor worm of very common mud, which has been since the beginning of time acting the God.  Ay, the aurelia-born image of grace sees a difference when it looks from the sun to the epigenetic thing which He raises out of corruption.  There was, in that small place of skulls, a rehearsal of the great day.  We hear little of these freaks now-a-days; but it was different then, when men made themselves demons by drink.  One night William Maule of Panmure, then in his days of graceless frolic; Fletcher Read, the nephew of the laird, and subsequently the laird himself, of Logie; Rob Thornton, the merchant, Dudhope, and other kindred spirits, who used to sing in the inn of Sandy Morren, the hotel-keeper, “Death begone, here’s none but souls,” sallied drunk from the inn.  The story goes that the night was dark, and there stood at the door a hearse, which